Monday Notes

I hate blaming referees, I really do. Typically, within a given game it all evens out. Some calls go one way and some go the other. But there were so many plays that were affected by the referees. I talked to a UT fan on Sunday morning and his comment was UT seemed to get the benefit of more than a couple of calls. Don't get me wrong, I know that sometime this season, the shoe will be on the proverbial other foot, but this was an opportunity to completely turn around what has been a less than stellar Texas Tech season so it hurts a little more (enough to not want to write about it all day Sunday). Wrapped up in all of this is Leach voicing his concern about some of these calls. If he doesn't defend his team then he's not doing his job, and he deserves an explanation on some of those calls. It's a tight rope to walk and any fan of any team would expect their head coach to be upset. Despite all of this, I'll post the article which addresses the bad calls here and here and ignore them from this point forward. We all remember the Tech v. OU game last year, right?

Defense:

• I thought this before the game, that we can't tackle and we are a bad defense. We are. We played great for the first quarter, but after that I think we all saw Tech's true colors. We cannot tackle and we let UT just grind it out almost the entire 2nd half.
  
• We should have all been on the same page. Under no circumstances should Sweed be left to go 1 on 1 against anyone. It's a bad matchup for just about anyone, but especially against this defense. That touchdown to Sweed in the corner of the endzone never should have happened as he never should have had single coverage all night long.
• There are times to go for the ball, make a play, try to intercept a pass, but you also have to know if you've got a safety behind you. On the touchdowns by Shipley and Cosby, we never should have let them get behind us. We were playing to win, I don't know why the idea of "bend but don't break" was not being preached to every player. We should not have given up the big play and we did almost all night long.
  
• Kellen Tillman is horrible. I have never seen a linebacker take such a poor angle as he did in trying to catch McCoy as McCoy scrambled for a touchdown. Not only did he take a bad angle, but he gave up on the play. Tillman is a bad player and had another personal foul penalty. What also bothers me is that Tillman cannot catch McCoy. I'm not saying that I expect every player to be able to catch any quarterback, but McCoy does not have great speed and if nothing else, you would expect a linebacker to, at the very least, hold their own against most quarterbacks. Tillman cannot.
• Despite big plays given up by the secondary, which is a lot, I thought they played pretty darn good.
  
• The defensive down linemen played pretty good, but I'd still like to see a little more pressure on the quarterback. I understand that it takes special players to do this, and we don't really have but one (Dawson), but it helps everyone if we can get a little more pressure.
• I thought it before the game and I still think it now, if Tech was to give up 200 yards rushing it was going to be a long day. They did and it was.

Offense:

• I thought Harrell played incredibly poised. For a kid who was under fire for throwing bad interceptions, which he did, he was incredibly calm. When there was pressure he side-stepped the rushing linemen and was able to get off a pass more times than not. He took a sack, but that's okay, we just don't want the bad turnovers.
• Harrell really spread the ball around nicely, almost every receiver was involved.
  
• I still wonder what we're going to do next year when Hicks, Filani and Johnson are all three gone.
• Amendola was more involved than I've ever seen him. Did anyone catch him giving a forearm shiver to one of the Griffin brothers. Don't think that Amendola didn't have him in his sights from the beginning. Amendola was laid out pretty good by one of Griffin brothers in the first drive of the game.
  
• Shannon Woods should be used more often during the game. He can be a weapon, he's catches everything thrown at him and he's a pretty good runner. I think part of the lack of a rushing game has something to do with UT still being pretty good, but I put a lot of the blame on Leach for not utilizing him more.
• The offensive line did an admirable job. I hardly remember a series where it appeared that the offensive line did not pull their weight. There were some times that their penalties really cost Tech, especially in the second half, but I thought they played pretty good.
• Harrell did a really good job of picking up the blitz throughout the game. The times that UT blitzed with effectiveness was not very often. I think at some point UT realized that Harrell was taking advantage of the secondary if they did blitz and they back off into coverage. This is a significant improvement from two and three weeks ago.
• All in all, I can't complain about the offense too much. They score enough to win.
  

Nice article by DMN's McMahon on Harrell's progress. He's maturing before our eyes. I hope we all take notice.

FWST has a nice roundup of this past week's action and looking forward to this weekend.

Off the field and on the court, Rogdrick Craig will miss the entire season with a heart condition. Let's hope this is something that can be fixed, not from a basketball perspective, but from a human being perspective.